Month: April 2015

The Present Day and Future Climate of Greenland

Regional Climate Model Data from HIRHAM5 for Greenland

In this post I am linking to a dataset I have made available for the climate of Greenland. In my day job I run a Regional Climate Model (RCM) over Greenland called HIRHAM5 . I will write a simple post soon to explain what that means in less technical terms but for now I just wanted to post a link to a dataset I have prepared based on output from an earlier simulation.

Mean annual 2m temperature over Greenland (1989 - 2012) from HIRHAM5 forced by ERA-Interim on the boundaries
Mean annual 2m temperature over Greenland at 5km resolution (1989 – 2012) from HIRHAM5 forced by ERA-Interim on the boundaries [Yes I know it’s a rainbow scale. Sorry! it’s an old image – will update soon honest…]

This tar file gives the annual means for selected variables at 0.05degrees (5.5km) resolution over the Greenland/Iceland domain.

I am currently running a newly updated version of the model but the old run gave us pretty reasonable and could be used for lots of different purposes. I am very happy for other scientists to use it as they see fit, though do please acknowledge us, and we especially like co-authorships (we also have to justify our existence to funding agencies and governments!).

This is just a sample dataset we have lots of other variables and they are available at 3 hourly, daily, monthly, annual, decadal timescales so send me an email (rum [at] dmi [dot] dk) if you would like more/a subset/different/help with analysis of data. This one is for the period 1989 – 2012. I have now updated it to cover up to the end of 2014. The new run starts in 1979 and will continue to the present and has a significantly updated surface scheme plus different SST/sea ice forcing and a better ice mask.

I have also done some simulations of future climate change in Greenland at the same high resolution of 5km using the EC-Earth GCM at the boundaries for RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios which could be fun to play with if you are interested in climate change impacts in Greenland, Iceland and Arctic Canada.

Mean annual 2m temperature change between control period (1990 - 2010) and end of the century (2081 - 2100) under RCP45 from HIRHAM5 climate model runs forced by EC-Earth GCM at the boundaries
Mean annual 2m temperature change between control period (1990 – 2010) and end of the century (2081 – 2100) under RCP45 from HIRHAM5 climate model runs forced by EC-Earth GCM at the boundaries.  This plot shows the full domain I have data for in the simulations.

This run should be referenced with this paper:

Quantifying energy and mass fluxes controlling Godthåbsfjord freshwater input in a 5 km simulation (1991-2012), Langen, P. L., Mottram, R. H., Christensen, J. H., Boberg, F., Rodehacke, C. B., Stendel, M., van As, D., Ahlstrøm, A. P., Mortensen, J., Rysgaard, S., Petersen, D., Svendsen, K. H., Aðalgeirsdóttir, G.,Cappelen, J., Journal of Climate (2015)

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00271.1 

PDF here

Finally I should acknowledge that this work has been funded by a lot of different projects:

Picture4

Space for cycling

Golden bike sculpture on tower in Rådhusplads, Copenhagen
Copenhagen: A city that loves bikes so much it puts golden ones on the top of some buildings…

Warning! This post is positively evangelical about cycling…

I bike everywhere. I take the Sterna chicks cycling everywhere and it has got to the point I almost don’t know how to get around the city without my bike. This is not unusual in Copenhagen. Cycling culture is one of the things I love most about living here. The wider benefits of being in a biking city are far-reaching and far too many mention here (but check out Copenhagenize for an inspiring run-down).

I have always cycled everywhere, and in fact have never owned my own car, though I can drive and even enjoy it – albeit on congestion free roads such as you might find in the North of Scotland.  However, the vulnerability of cyclists in the UK has come to disturb me ever more. Especially since the very tragic death of Dr. Kat Giles, a polar scientist I had met a couple of times, under the wheels of an HGV in London on a route she had cycled for ten years or so back in 2013.

I am so accustomed to the safety of cycling in Copenhagen that I think I would find it hard to go back to cycling in the UK or anywhere else without good bike infrastructure (including separated bike lanes). I would certainly not let my 4 year old bike to the nursery as I do at present (and for which a poor child was threatened with having their bike confiscated recently in the UK, but I digress). Even my mother (hi Mum!) has been witnessed riding a bike in Copenhagen. I have video evidence.

Be that as it may, such are the benefits of biking that I feel the UK and in particular the mega-city that is London should really be doing A LOT more to facilitate normal people cycling everyday . So I was rather disappointed, but entirely unsurprised to see this pop up on twitter:

https://twitter.com/Hackneycyclist/status/592387246063538176

Hackneytwitter

Now, on my regular commuting route, the University of Copenhagen is building a brand new and very large building spanning both sides of a large dual carriageway that is one of the main routes into Copenhagen. Bear in mind that around 40% of commuters travel by bike in this city and this is a major route, so clearly the bike path cannot just be closed. Here are a few photos I took yesterday on the spur of the moment (with my fairphone in case you’re interested in cool ethical consumer electronics) showing what the builders have done:

2015-04-27 15.31.44 2015-04-27 15.31.47 2015-04-27 15.31.49 2015-04-27 15.31.53 2015-04-27 15.31.56 2015-04-27 15.32.01 2015-04-27 15.32.05 2015-04-27 15.32.10

The pavement and separated bike lane have been taken over by the construction, shielded by the link fence on the right; the near side lane on the road is now a shared bike/pedestrian route and the whole thing is smoothly transitioned in and out with the assistance of some blue paint and traffic bollards on the road and of course temporary tarmac ramps to help cyclists get over the kerb at both ends of the building works. The same is true on the other side, so the road has temporarily narrowed to a normal road before widening again to a dual carriageway.

You see, it really isn’t hard to do major building works and keep the bike traffic flowing.

The thing is, this isn’t a unique situation, even small building works where the bike lane and/or pavement is likely to be blocked is treated like this in Copenhagen. It’s about treating all people on the move with respect and it’s something a lot of cities, and countries could learn from when thinking about road safety, sustainable transport and above all quality of life for everyone.

This is what #spaceforcycling really looks like.

Climate and ice sheet modelling at DMI

I was very honoured to be asked to give a short talk last week to some students at the Danish Technical University. The subject was ice sheet modelling and climate at DMI where I work in the Research department, climate and Arctic section.
I thought this could be interesting for others to look at too, so I have uploaded the powerpoint presentation on my academia.edu page.

In the presentation I try to explain why we are interested in climate and ice sheets and then give a brief overview of our model systems and the projects we are currently working on. We are mainly interested in the Greenland ice sheet from the perspective of sea level rise. If we are to climate change we need to know how fast and how much of Greenland will melt and how this will change local and regional sea level. There are also studies showing that increased run-off from the ice sheet may change ocean circulation patterns and sea ice. There is lots more stuff to look at so feel free to download it.

I end up with a very brief overview of our biggest project at the moment, ice2ice. This is a large ERC funded project with the Niels Bohr Institute and partners in Bergen at the Bjerknes Climate Research Centre. I may write a brief post on ice2ice soon if I get chance. It’s a really interesting piece of work being focused on past glacial-interglacial climate change rather than present day or the future and I think we have potential to do some great science with it.

At the risk of seeming like I’m blowing the DMI trumpet (something rarely done or even really seen as socially acceptable in Denmark!), I think we at DMI have a lot to be proud of. We are a small group from a small country with limited resources but my colleagues have pioneered high resolution regional climate modelling of the Greenland ice sheet and the development of coupled climate and ice sheet models at both regional and global scales. I was brought in as a glaciologist to work on the interface between ice sheet and atmosphere, needless to say I have learnt a hell of lot here. It’s been an exhilarating few years.

If you have any questions, I will enable comments for this thread (but with moderation so it may take  a while for you to see it).

Finally, here is a little movie of calving icebergs

shot by Jason Amundson, University of Alaska Fairbanks at Jakobshavn Isbrae in West Greenland.

 

 

 

Planet Carbon

There are some really powerful visualisations in this short 4 minute video from Carbon Visuals about the sheer amount of energy, mostly from fossil fuels, that we have come to rely on. I think it really shows what a huge challenge we face in terms of both energy policy (we’re burning through it as if it will never run out) and climate change.

I am not really convinced by CCS (Carbon capture and storage) though, it seems to require a very large amount of energy just to make the CCS process work (around 30% of powerplant output if I recall correctly) burning through our fossil fuel supplies even faster. Several programmes I have seen recently (for example, the excellent Planet Oil from the BBC, now probably available on youtube, made by Professor Iain Stewart, head of the RSGS) make the point that our civilisation is basically burning through the easy energy.

If we don’t invest in developing other sources now, it will be so much harder in the future. Those other sources, realistically speaking, have to include nuclear. As Brian Cox points out in his beautifully filmed epic Human Universe, this will also have to include nuclear fusion.

I think the best resource I have found to think about some of these issues is Without Hot Air, an excellent book by David MacKay and available here for free download or you can buy a paper copy in the usual places.